Strange Women, The (3 page)

"That was why." Nora stared out the black window. Mack's sympathy made her feel—for the first time in years—like breaking down. Finally she looked up.

"They think, after a couple more operations, he'll have the full use of his legs again. But what about you, Mack? Still digging up buried cities and broken pottery in your spare time?"

"Full time now." Mack took Jill's slender, ringed fingers. "I got stuck behind a university desk for a few years, but I hated it. Then I was in Cambodia with a crew from the Sorbonne, and then—well, there's no time for a full-scale Odyssey, but next month I'm going to Peru with Harry Dunbardon. There's a city back in the Cordilleras—we flew over it a year ago and took aerial photos—"

"Dunbardon! But I saw that in the Geographic, Mack! Was that you?"

"Yours truly. It's back in the eastern range, what they call the Cordillera Oriente—but if I get started talking shop, I won't quit tonight. You know me."

"My letters used to come from the craziest places. Still as foot-loose as ever, then?"

"Well, not quite." He smiled at Jill, then looked at the window, dark with blowing snow. "I expect, before we order dinner, I'd better go and see what's doing on the car. I left it in the garage over there—I need a new one, but it hardly seems worth the trouble, when I'm taking off for Peru in three weeks!" He started to shove back his chair. "But you're not practicing here, are you, Nora?"

She shook her head. "I had an office in the Henderson building—maybe you saw it in the papers when it burned down? Everything gone, of course. I managed to lease office space, with a friend whose partner was retiring, but they couldn't get it fixed up within a month. Then I heard that old Byrd was laid up, and I offered to come out here until he was on his feet again. I've seen lights in the house, but it never occurred to me it was you!"

"And we could have gone right on missing each other," Mack said, "I've been driving to Syracuse two or three times a week—there are two big warehouses full of odds and ends that have to be crated and catalogued and shipped here, there and everywhere." He rose, pulling his coat around his shoulders. "Let me just go and see about the car. You order for me, Jill."

Jill watched him out of sight, then leaned across the table. "Nora, you didn't really recognize me yesterday, did you?"

"After you'd gone, I realized that you looked like Pammy. When are you and Mack going to be married?"

Jill said flatly and politely, "We haven't set a date," and the words were a courteous, but perfectly formed barrier against further questions.

Not so idyllic, then. But it doesn't seem like Mack.
Is
it his baby?

"Nora, you—you won't tell Mack I consulted you, will you?"

"Why—no, if you don't want me to," Nora said, mildly confused. "Didn't you ever hear of a professional confidence? I certainly wouldn't bring it up, unless you did."

Mack, snowflakes clinging to his thick eyebrows and beading his coat, came back and sat down. "The car's had it. Hope you've got your walking shoes on, Jill."

"I've got my car," Nora said, "I can run you both home before office hours. How far out do you live, Jill?"

Mack looked up sharply, but Jill met Nora's eyes, smiling.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm staying with Mack at your old place, and as far as people around here are concerned, I'm calling myself Mrs. MacLellan just now. It doesn't matter, but Mack's been in a stew because he introduced me as Jill Bristol."

Mack muttered, "Well, I wanted to ask Nora to our wedding, so how could I say—" he shrugged helplessly, but Jill reached across the table for his hand, and he smiled at her, his rugged face transformed with love. Nora felt a touch of cruel, sudden envy.
She
had been cheated of her honeymoon...

They lingered at the table, Nora and Mack exchanging desultory reminiscences; Jill seemed content to listen, saying little. Nora finally had to break it up.

"I'm sorry, but I may have someone waiting for me. If I'm going to drop you off, we'd better get going."

They were crowded in the front seat of her car, and Nora felt Jill's closeness with a small, not unpleasant shock. She stopped at the old house which had once been her home, too, and watched them go up the drive together, Mack's hand protectively beneath Jill's elbow.

As they mounted the snow-laden steps, they turned and waved at her; then Mack drew Jill gently inside. Nora saw a light go on; she shivered, feeling cold and lonely, and shut out in the drifting snow.

After a minute she set her mouth firmly, reached in her pocket for a cigarette and started the car toward her evening's work, the strange rustling house and her cold, lonely bed.

Nora eased her car toward the curb, and rolled down the window. "Jill?" she called, "are you going to Albany? Wouldn't you rather ride? The bus won't be along for twenty minutes yet."

Jill came around the car and got in, and Nora asked, "Where is Mack?"

"He had to go to Syracuse. He wouldn't take me because he's still not sure of the car."

A late thaw had melted most of the snow left by the blizzard; the road was clear of slush, and the sky had a damp, deceptive blueness. Jill sat very straight on her half of the seat, like a well-behaved little girl in mittens and boots. Nora said after a minute, "I'm going to stop off at the lab and pick up your test report. You must be anxious about it."

"Not particularly. The rabbit test is the one they call the Friedman test, isn't it? We used the old Ascheim-Zondek test, with mice, in Syracuse."

Nora raised her eyebrows, startled.

"You certainly are full of surprises," she said. "Where did you learn all that?"

"I majored in biology at Cornell. I worked for a while as a technician in a Syracuse hospital—that's where I met Mack."

"When is Mack leaving for Peru?"

"Next week. Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when he can get a flight."

No
wonder she wanted to know right away...

"Are you planning on going with him, Jill?"

"Oh, no. I couldn't."

"Are you—do you mind my asking you? Are you going to stay on in Mayfield after he leaves? What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Jill wearily, and Nora, turning her head, saw that her eyes were closed. She had meant the question quite literally, what are you going to do, what are your plans, but the unconscious despair in Jill's voice stopped her cold. It had sounded so helpless, so indecisive, as if—the thought came unbidden—as if the girl had not contemplated any future at all; as if there was nothing she
could
do after Mack had gone.

Nora made her decision suddenly, as she always made important decisions. "You worked as a technician? Can you do routine blood tests, sedimentation rates, that sort of thing?"

"I did in Syracuse."

"Well, look here, then. Dr. Byrd will be back Monday. A classmate of mine wants a couple of weeks off at Christmas, and I'm still at large—my office isn't ready yet—so I'm going up there. My office girl doesn't want to leave town, so why don't you come along? You could make yourself useful, and I imagine we could keep each other company. Unless you're going home for Christmas."

"I haven't a home to go to," Jill said, and her face warned Nora not to ask questions.

"Well, then, we'll call it settled," Nora said, swinging the car into the lane of traffic over the Hudson bridge. Far below lay the drab winter harbor, ships lying frozen into the greenish ice, and Nora shivered.

"Where shall I let you out? I'm going all the way uptown."

"Anywhere. I'm just going to kill time—maybe go window shopping."

Nora, somehow reluctant to let her go, said "Nonsense. This is no weather to be killing time like that. If you really mean that, come along with me and meet my husband!"

After last time, she was thinking as she turned her car into the hospital parking lot, it's just as well if we aren't alone together...

Jill followed quietly as Nora asked at the lobby desk for a visitor's pass. But as they rode up in the elevator, she said in surprise, "They're awfully formal here, aren't they? If even an outside doctor has to have a pass—"

Without knowing it, Jill had touched a perpetual sore spot in Nora—that in a hospital, of all places, she had to stop and ask permission, like other visitors. No matter how often she did it, it was always newly annoying.

"They'd let me in if they knew I was a doctor," she said at last. "Kit asked me not to mention it."

"Why, I wonder? I'd think he'd be proud."

Nora said, "I don't know." But she knew, very well. Even the surgeon handling Kit's case did not know of his wife's profession. Kit, oddly touchy in some ways, felt that professional collusion—even an ordinary exchange of courtesies between his doctor and his wife—would somehow undermine that ferocious self-sufficiency of his.

"I guess he didn't want me discussing his case behind his back. This way—he's still in a private room since his last operation," she said, and turned in the half-open door.

"Kit, darling!"

Even flattened against his pillows, Kit Ellersen had an air of command. His face, haggard and lined about mouth and eyes, looked disarmingly young; Nora felt the painful wrench, deep in her body, as he grinned at her.

She bent and his arms closed around her; his mouth, hard and hungry, thrust at hers with rough violence. He grasped at her upper arms with painfully strong hands; she felt the scratch of his chin, the electric warmth of his breath, the probe of his tongue against hers, plucking a string of desire—and sudden dread—deep in her body. She drew away.

"We have company, Kit," she said softly.

"Hell," he muttered ungraciously, and raised himself slightly against the pillows. He was rumpled and untidy in his hospital pajamas. He looked at Jill, and suddenly, he smiled.

He had a wonderful smile, so vital that it cancelled the lines of pain and weariness, and he looked as if he were loafing there for the fun of it. It melted Nora, and she saw it work the familiar magic on Jill; the shy and sullen face lit up with an elfish twinkle.

"What a wife," Kit said, "she even rounds up beautiful women for me."

Nora, aware suddenly that her lipstick was smeared all over her face, turned away.

"Don't mind my staring," Kit went on, "but the scenery around here is usually damn monotonous. The nurses are brassy blonde battle-axes, six feet tall and at least forty; and I'm sure they're all frigid—not that I've bothered to find out. And then there are the orderlies, as nice a bunch of queers as you'll find outside Greenwich Village. I must say they let
me
alone, though." He chuckled. "But if you knew what good it does us just to look at a pretty girl, all you glamorous dolls would line up three deep at the foot of the beds. Come here, honey bun, and do your bit for my morale."

Jill came and gave him her hand. Nora, seeing him through Jill's eyes, felt a surge of defensive love. Kit hated shaking hands because of the rough ridge of scar tissue across his right palm. If Jill stares, Nora thought, I'll break her neck. But she didn't. She smiled and said nicely, "You make me wish I'd dressed up to the occasion."

"You're safer like that," Kit said, studying her, "boots and all. At that, half the patients would chase you for three blocks. Better smuggle her out on a stretcher, Nora."

"Kit, this is Jill Bristol, who's going to marry Mack, and I'm taking her to Fairfax with me—"

"My God," said Kit, "what a waste."

"—as a sort of nurse."

He whistled. "Hey, now, that's more like it. She can nurse
me
any old time! Let's see, now; how about starting with a bed bath, and then a rubdown, and—"

"Behave," Nora said.

"Behave? What the hell for!" He looked up at Jill with a whimsical smile. "Or must we keep the conversation very, very nice, because you are a very, very nice girl? Nothing above the neck—I mean below the neck? On second thought, I like it better the first way. Give me a cigarette, Nora."

Nora recalled herself. "I brought you a carton, but I left them—Jill, you keep him company."

She had forgotten his cigarettes, talking to Jill; but she could buy a carton downstairs. It was the first time she had forgotten, and she felt ashamed.

She heard him laughing as she returned along the hall. It was good for Kit—to see someone with whom he could talk without perpetual tension of desire, taut between them even when they were at opposite ends of the room.

She heard Jill say in a scandalized tone, "Oh, shame on you!" as she pushed open the door.

"Watch out," said Kit loudly, "here comes my wife. You came back too soon, Nora; in another five minutes I'd have had her in bed. All that work for nothing."

"Oh, don't!" Jill pleaded, her face reddening. "What will Nora think?"

"Unfortunately, honey bun, Nora knows what to think." Kit sighed. "Do I look dangerous, Jill? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Plenty weak." He took her hand and patted it, big-brother fashion. Nora winced, wondering; had Kit really got to the point where he could laugh, or was this a very subtle way of stirring sexual sympathy?

"I wanted to see you blush," Kit said. "Nora's lost the trick, after seeing so much life in the raw." He took the cigarettes.

"Let me get you—"

"For Christ's sake, my
hands
aren't incapacitated!" Kit snapped, and tore a pack open, rummaging in the stand for a lighter. "Nora? Jill?"

Nora took one; Jill refused.

"Now tell me about the buried city of Mack's."

"I'm afraid I can't," Jill murmured, "Mack has to put everything into words of one syllable for me."

"Oh, he'll make a fossil hunter out of you, if I know Mack. You'll be tagging along on the next trip with a camera, and all the little MacLellans will learn their ABCs off the walls of King Tut's tomb. I remember one time he dragged us all back into the hills hunting arrowheads—" Kit leaned back on his pillows, absent-mindedly blowing a double smoke-ring. Nora listened, watching him, wishing suddenly that Mack could have come along.